Valley Crossing - A management Problem 

Question: Three people want to cross a valley which is more than 1 step wide.So how will they all cross the valley?

Answer:  When the leading person crosses the edge of the path, he starts hanging in the air. But he can't fall unless the other two give up or he leaves the hold of the bar. And as the 2nd person reaches the verge of the path ,the first person reaches the other end.Now Second person hangs in the air holding the long bar.

Similarly, as soon as the third person reaches the edge, the second person reaches the other end.
And finally all three cross the valley.

So , how does this exercise relate to a manager?

Just as the co-ordination among the team members was made in the exercise , in the similar fashion , the coordination among the employees in an organization is required. And that relies in the hands of the manager.

The management principles which I found in this activity are:

Team work : 

To succeed at the task in hand, everyone involved needs to combine their efforts. If everyone does their job well, then it increases what the team can accomplish. This teamwork has to be recognised by everyone and know that great things can happen if individuals master the fundamentals and work together as one unit. Everyone has their own unique role, but each person's individual role must be recognised and appreciated.

" Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success. ”

When challenges arise (as they always do), the team needs to have the resources, accountability and commitment to deal with them in a constructive and positive manner. A sense of teamwork will play an integral part in this.

Individually humans are weak, Together they are taller, Provided they are managed properly.

                                                    T - Together
                                        E - Everyone
                                        A - Achieves
                                        M - More

Leadership:

In the exercise, each member has the same set of tasks, burdens and responsibilities. But , not every member in the team would take the initiative to go first as the first person is the first risk taker and not everyone in the team would be willing to follow anyone else. Yet, the show has to run and the team has to do its job and this is where a manager comes in.

The Manager is responsible for taking the initiative because he visualizes the goal in his mind. The manager is responsible for the work division, for giving the interdependent roles to the team workers and finally take them all along to achieve the target.

Work Division and Interdependence:

Now, it would not be practical if each role in an organization can be crafted as in the above case with similar risks borne by everyone and expect everyone else to follow the leader thereby satisfying every employee.

Well, we certainly cannot have an organization designed to satisfy every employee. It is the role of the manager to divide the work in an effective manner keeping in mind the accomplishment of his SMART goal.

Remember ,

                    ||   We never create the organization as per the capability of the employees.

                               We just design the organization and adjust people into it.    ||

The responsibilities of a manager are:-

1. Work Planning:

How to organize work and people in terms of specializing people in specific work or distributing a common chunk of work among all?

2. Authority Planning:

How to organize power or authority in terms of decentralizing into departments, each responsible for their own performance and decisions, or centralizing decision making across the organization?

3. Planning  - Control:

How to regulate work? By a set of hard enforced rules or a set of norms “supposed” to be followed?

For performing the tasks in the most effective way ,the manager must be well versed with these tools. The manager also has to be equipped with these skills to understand his responsibility at each stage:

In the diagram shown , the skills have been divided into three levels. That depicts the range of skills required by a manager in each role. That is something which I have personally felt during my job with my ex-employer:
1.In a lower level management , technical skills or the domain knowledge and human resource management is of utmost importance followed by Conceptual skills.

2.In a middle level management , most important aspect is of human resource management, followed by conceptual and technical skills because here strategies are made using conceptual skills and maximum human resource management is done.

3. In a higher level management , most important part of the job comes out to be strategy conceptualization and work force management. So , it is the conceptual and human skills that dominate here , with a very attention to the technical aspect of the things.


This can be related to any real world company, and this is why a starting level manager with technical and human skills take some time to reach to the higher level management as the conceptual skills are learnt by experience.